So I’m dating myself a little bit, but 20 years ago, um, I went into a Barnes and noble and my employer at the time, I was an employee at a company called I-Cubed.

I wasn’t yet the CEO, and I was a sales rep, and I was selling technology solutions to enterprise firms, which was a phenomenal learning experience because the sheer act of asking someone to pay you millions of dollars for something I want you to think about the downstream impact and conversations that must occur.

We use words like return on investment. That’s a serious question, when you’re asking somebody to pay $5 million for a software system. When you are thinking about whether or not somebody makes a decision that can change their career, that’s what I’m selling to. Because if I sell you a software system and it doesn’t work, and you advocate that this software system for $5 million is good for the company, you will get fired, right, so that person is feeling pressure and stress right over that decision. And so sales forced me to learn how to communicate, how to de-risk, how to explain things in terms to different stakeholders.

But now let me go back to this Barnes and Noble, so I’m in this Barnes and noble and I am perusing the magazines and I see the Harvard Business Review, right, and I’m a sales rep. Like I don’t, I’m not reading this stuff all the time. And, but I’m looking at, you know, uh, business magazines, I’m looking at Ink, looking at an Entrepreneur and I see this Harvard Business Review and it’s got this, it’s like Harvard Business Review has this extra gloss they put on the magazine. I don’t know if you all have seen the physical magazine, but it’s the glossiest thing ever, right. This just pops I think that’s strategic. But anyway, this glossy magazine, 

but then I started looking through the magazine and I see a couple of articles. I see the abstracts and I see the way that it’s laid out in that in each of the articles, they give a very good kind of four or five sentence executive summary write up about this very in-depth highly researched piece of content. So you’re able to kind of skim the magazine. And if I look on the cover, right, it gives me the titles of the different topics, but then it also gives me the page number, right.

I’m like, okay, wait a minute. Who is this audience of this? Because like, this is simple to use for a busy person, the way that it’s laid out. And then I turn over the magazine and it’s $16.95, and I’m like, who that, who did they think they are? Like, what is in this? These are the most arrogant people on the planet, they want to charge $16.95 for a single issue of this magazine. So I’m having all of this emotion in Barnes and noble, I’m just like mesmerized and then I said, well, I’m going to buy one, right, like I need to get, I need it. I need one of these in my life Like you’re $16.95 it will last me for the year.

You know what I mean? Like, it’s got to be something in it So I start reading this article, and I start reading about the professors and the, and the researchers and the editorial staff. What I found is that they created a highly researched synthesized version of key topics and trends, and they put it in a single package that was quite frankly, highly valuable.

And for the next 20 years, every month I’ve read HBR, and then what I figured out is I said, if I learned these phrases, use these facts, I can sell more software because the way they’re using data, the way they’re using their research already gives me credibility because I don’t have to tell people what I said.

I use that brand to make me more relevant to the C-suite I was selling to. So instead of $16.95 being a highly expensive investment, it actually became a supercharging tool for the language that I use to sell millions of dollars of software. So what I’m trying to share with you is that in learning and in leadership, just like in video games, there’s cheat codes.

There’s ways to do things faster, more efficiently, if you think about things in a different lens. My initial lens was this price is too high because I was thinking about costs, not value, all these things that you study in terms of your MBA, but how do you apply that to your personal development and growth?

A cup of coffee is a very low-cost item. Now, if I think about a Starbucks cup of coffee and the brand of Starbucks, and you put like Cocoa and express those shots and whipped cream, now it’s $8.95 for a cup of coffee, but if I’m having that cup of coffee with an executive who wants to mentor young people, then that cup of coffee is highly valued.

So one of the cheat codes that I use throughout my career in order to progress is Harvard Business Review, cups of coffee, and the five minutes at the end of each. I’m going to talk to you about these three things, and I’m going to give you these three cheat codes, then I’ll get into kind of the rest of the presentation, but no matter what else I say, these are valuable and have worked for me in a significant way.

So we already talked about Barnes and Nobles and the Harvard Business Review. So now let’s talk about a cup of coffee. Most business leaders find it very difficult to say no to competitive learners on their rise because they see themselves in you. It doesn’t matter what you look like, doesn’t matter where you come from, it doesn’t matter your age, doesn’t matter ethnicity. It is that strive for higher level of achievement that will relate you and your goals and dreams to most leaders you come in contact with. 

The reason you’re not having more cups of coffee with people that can help you is your fear and asking, not the percentages of them saying yes, because I knew that I started to ask people that I met would they be willing, would they be open, let’s have a cup of coffee and let me pick their brain and talk about the future, talk about business, talk about what they’ve learned. And so over the years in my career, I’ve probably bought a thousand dollars’ worth of coffees, but I’ve gotten a million dollars’ worth of insight and information. You also, as leaders need to be building your business networks before you need them. When you need your network, you can sound like a beggar. When you cultivate your network, you are a part of an ecosystem that you’ve cultivated over the years, one cup of coffee at a time. 

Last five minutes of a meeting, and this is something I just happened on one of the clients early in my software career was Adobe systems and you all are familiar with Adobe PDF files, but you know, the Adobe Cloud, Adobe enterprise marketing, like they’re, they’re way different than, than they were as a business when I was working with them.

But I’ve worked with Adobe for many years in different facets, in San Jose and been to their triple towers and all that great company and phenomenal experience, but one of the things that was really helpful for me is working in small businesses, trying to sell to large businesses. It allowed me to understand both and the requirements and different things of that nature.

But the reason that I bring up this element in the last five minutes of a meeting, I was just talking to a gentleman that ran partnerships for Adobe, and we finished our meeting early. Like we just, we had an hour on the calendar, which is a huge amount of time for an executive. And we finished in about 45 minutes and he said to me, he said, Don, he said, I feel like you’re striving to do big things, is there anything I can do to be helpful for you? Like he asked me like, and so I thought about it and I was like, well, sure Like I have questions, like talk to me about how in large companies you actually make decisions It seems like everything’s done by committee.

Like what is the political environment in a large billion-dollar organization? Like what, as a young salesperson, could I understand about that? And so he said, well, it’s actually very simple. He said, you have to understand the persona and perspective of who you’re working with. Some people in corporations are just trying to get by.

If you’re selling to that person, it’ll take forever because they have to check with everyone to make sure they’re not at fault for anything that goes wrong. He said, you never want to sell to that person. It will literally take you forever. You, you don’t want to try to drive a new initiative with them. 

The person you’re trying to find, are the individuals that have a track record for risk taking within the organization and the ear of people that have check writing power. That means that person is taking protected and projected risk on behalf of the company. So that person’s job is to shake things up.

That person’s job is to look at what’s next, when you are selling to working with, and if you are working in a big company, working for, you want to try to work for somebody that has that profile, that ear, the executive suite, but then the role to do things different, to look at what’s next. And so he started to talk me through just some of the things that I could be helpful in, in my career.

And it was wonderful, but he asked me if I needed something, but I’m always willing and wanting to kind of push the envelope on things. So I thought about it a little different, and so I started to try to end my meetings with executives or people, five minutes early. And then I just asked that leader, if we finished five minutes early and we get our work done, I share the information you need. Would it be okay if I asked a question or two, just for my own growth and personal development?

I’ve never had someone tell me no to that. And then doing that over a period of years, here’s what occurred. I learned a lot, and then my stature with the people that I was talking to rose, because all leaders like to feel like they are smart, important, valued. So they’re giving me information that I could use, one, so I’m a, I’m a winner right there. I just, I win. But then the second win, is that leader gets a chance to share with me, and then we’re more connected over and above the particular reason that we were having the call. 

Now here’s another phrase that typically we use, but we don’t backfill. People do business with people they like, have you ever heard this? So then how do you get people to like you, right? Because you dress a certain way, because you have the funniest joke? No, that doesn’t even matter to people that are higher achievers and trying to win. It’s about trust, relationship, and rapport, and what better way to get rapport than having somebody teach you something. You’re submitting yourself in that moment.

You’re in a learning mode and they’re giving something of value back to you. And so those are the three cheat codes that have helped me immensely right on my journey. And the thing that I described myself, and there’s a lot of things in my, in my bio that I’m proud of. But one of the things that I really understand is that you don’t get anywhere that matters without an amazing team.

So then for you all, as leaders for you all that will soon have freshly minted MBAs, which people were respected and admire, and then sometimes in some cases be jealous up. Right? So you have to think about both a lot of times when you have your MBA and your degree, and you throw that out there, right? You think everyone’s going to react to it the same way.

For some people that makes you a little more intimidating, right. And you have to know that and understand that to navigate in terms of the interpersonal relationships you’re developing. The way that we speak a lot of times, when I talk to folks that are in the MBA kind of cycle, they can really overdue, and this may not be you, I’m just talking in generalities, right, buzzword salad, and depending on your audience that can take you a step back when somebody really needs to understand the concept in a very plain-spoken way.

I’ll pivot and share this. You don’t succeed in a big way without other people. One of the great skills that I think super important is how to be a good teammate. See a lot of times we’re teaching leaders how to be leaders and that’s important, and that’s why I’m here, and I appreciate that. But being a good teammate is super important because the people that will select you to be a leader, the way that corporations are built now are the people that are all around you.

And so one of the things that’s super important with any area that you’re in is make sure that you’re always working on honing your interpersonal and your people skills, independent of level of person in the organization. A lot of times, we naturally, when we’re in a room, when we’re in a boardroom setting, we’re in a conference room setting, we try to figure out the hierarchy of the room, and then we direct our questions to the most senior person in the room. It’s a natural thing. 

Men by default tend to do it based on gender. And again, I’m speaking to some generalities based on 30 years of experience, but the issue with that is that you don’t actually know who the leader relies on, and that’s actually who you’re trying to influence. The thing about businesses. Things are not always as they seem on the surface. And what you’re trying to understand is the power structures for you to get what it is you want or need.

One of the things that it taught me, and so I do, independent of your goals, you should, in some part of your career, sell something, whatever it is, right. If it’s a side hustle and you make jewelry, if it is technology sales and you spend a rotation, you should figure out in your career how to sell something That’s super important when you’re thinking about how the business works. Because the thing that makes me smile is people with high octane ideas that have never asked somebody for money for the company they represent. 

May give me all these marketing ideas, like yeah, cool. Shut up. That ain’t going to, that that is not going to help me sell Like, right. Like you get a marketing brochure from somebody that’s never asked somebody for money. So that act of understanding it. And maybe it’s not even you being in sales, but spend time with salespeople to really intimately understand that tip of the spear of the business A lot of times when you have an MBA or you’re in a corporate setting and you’re doing strategy, you’re doing planning, you’re doing organizational design and all of these different things that you would be qualified to do.

Just make sure when you’re interviewing with companies, you ask for exposures, and relationships to people that are at the tip of the spear, because ultimately right, you all want to run businesses. You want to run divisions. You want to be general managers, XYZ. Ultimately these things are to help you get what you want, but you want to be exposed to people that have a skillset and a point of view that’s vastly different so that, that is incorporated into the research strategy planning, execution that you’re trying to accomplish. 

Here’s the thing that I see as we talk about leadership, but now back to very importantly, how to be a good teammate, most of us are naturally selfish. We are doing things because they affect us in a positive way. That’s not a negative thing. Most of us then, I’ll use me as an example, I had to understand why being selfless was helpful to get the things that I wanted. I can’t move you to an idea perspective motivates you to work harder, better, faster. If I don’t know what motivates you and how do I know what motivates you if I’ve never spent time with you, if I’ve never asked you, if all of our conversations have been transactional. 

It’s important, I was talking with a team member in one of my teams that we hired in and super ambitious and doing great. And I remember asking her, I said, well, tell me where you want to be in the next three years and be as specific as you can. The reason I say, be as specific as you can, is a lot of times, some people will use, right. I want to be their manager or I want to be a vice-president, and that’s not helpful in me understanding what they want to do and what motivates them.

And what was really interesting, is I started to find out things about this team member that I had no idea. I had no idea that she grew up in Germany or spent her high school years in Germany because her parents were in the military and that she wanted to be in roles that had a global business impact by her describing what she wanted, she also described some different things about her right now, allow me as her manager to be more effective in growing and leading her.

People will do hard things. They will take on tough challenges if they know what they’d benefit from as well. It’s super important as we’re thinking about leadership and as an entrepreneur, as a sales professional, as son of a football coach, I was a scholarship athlete at East Carolina University in football, American football, and I’d like to tell people I was a practice team all American. My, my best days were in practice, but it taught me a lot about teamwork. It taught me a lot about the physical challenges of being a high-level athlete and getting knocked down and having to get back up. And you can learn this in a lot of different ways, right?

You can learn in sports, you can learn in the military, you can learn it working through college. You can learn it being a single parent. You can, you can learn these things a lot of different ways. It always doesn’t have to be physical, but what I will tell you is that when you look at things that you’re working on working through to the goals that you have, knowing the goals of your teammates, right? Number one, and then number two, learn this phrase and this thought process, get good enough at your job, that you can be helpful for others to achieve their job. 

Be good enough at what you do that if you’re working 50 hours in a week or 45 hours in a week or 40 hours in a week, it’s hard for me to say, but like, that’s the thing now, 40 hours a week. And I don’t denigrate that, but for high octane achievers, I’m not sure how that works, if we’re being honest, we’re being direct. For the people that I lead and the organization I’m building, I have no issue, people would need to work when they need to work. We’re in a talent crisis. If you work 39.9 and those 39.9 are good, we’re good. But when you’re wanting to transform an organization, I still am learning how to do that on a clock, right? There’s a higher level of commitment that is required. 

But my point back to the team members is if you can do your job in 85% of the time that you are working, whatever that is for you and your life, your family, your goals, you have 15% of the time to learn something new, 15% of the time to help your teammates, and here’s the rockstar stuff. This is, this is where the money’s at. This is where the promotions at. You have 15% of the time to help your boss achieve something that they couldn’t do without you. 

That’s where you want to get to, because when you become relied upon, when my dad coached college football, he coached University of North Carolina, coached at University of Pittsburgh, University of Illinois, all over. So I moved around like, uh, like I was child of someone that was in the military in my early age. But I remember when he, he coached defensive line at the University of Pittsburgh and I would always go watch practice afterschool. And one of the cool things is, and this dates me, right? They have these like wireless things the coaches were now on the sidelines but back in the day they were cords And so I would, I would carry my dad’s cord through the games and you got to pull the cords and unwind the chords 

And so one of my greatest memories was being a ball boy, and which now I would say ball person but during that, that tier, you know, dating back to the language we used to use, but I would, I would pull the cord. I was doing this, this lowest level work you could do on a team but I got to be around people that were chasing greatness. I got to be around people that were going to become number one draft choices.

And so I remember listening to my dad. And when you think about football and it doesn’t matter if you follow the sport or not, I’ll give you the context. So when you have the different groups within a team, they usually have a little saying that they break down and talk about before they go to the showers and hit the showers. And my dad’s group of defensive linemen this one year, and I’ll never forget it, is I would say 1, 2, 3, you can always count on me. That was their, that was their phrase. No matter what else the rest of the team was doing, if a big play needed to occur, you could count on me. 

Now fast forward to why does this matter to you? You want to be that person for your leaders. And in order to be that person, you have to practice being that person in small ways, all along the way. And that’s why you want to get your core function done in 85% of the time, so that you have that extra time to learn, to grow, to ask more questions, to figure out if there’s a stretch assignment that you can take on, to tap one of your teammates and say, look, is there anything I can review for you?

How can I be helpful? And that starts to build two things. Number one, stretch strength, stretch strength, right? Number two, brand internal in the organization. Everybody has a personal brand and you build that, every conversation, every project, every interaction you have with people all the time. And if you are known by somebody that always meets their deadline, gets the work done, but always finds time to help their teammates.

That’s a winning brand, and that’s something that is transferable, any organization that you’re going to, or working with, any organization that you want to build. And so what I’m trying to do is take the experiences that I’ve had, but really give you some of the nuggets that underpin why I think I’ve been able to be successful and it’s not some typical pedigree. It is not, uh, some special skill. It is some small things that I’ve done over and over and over again So I had the best information in the room. 

Here’s the other thing that I think is really important. One of the things that’s super important when you have a lot of information and you’re really, really smart, like you don’t get into the school without being really, really smart. So you’re competing on your ideas with one another against a cohort of really bright and talented and gifted individuals, and that’s very good. Here’s the thing that is a limitation of that. You fall in the habit of thinking you having the answer is the win and that’s not the leadership level. That’s the individual contributor level. 

it’s a trap, and unfortunately you’re paying for this trap, but now that you know it’s a trap, you can sidestep it. You can gain the value of how you research, crunch information, how you analyze things, all of the strength of purpose that you’re gaining from the program. But now understand, in addition to that, the super power of a leader is how you pull information from other people, so you have more competitive choices for your ideas. 

That’s how you win. I was asked by one of my team members years ago, I was in the technology space at that time. That was the business that I was in and we’re doing computer rated design technology. So, uh, John Deere was a client, Lockheed Martin was a client.

And so we had software that when, uh, a lot of these CAD parts, hundreds of thousands of design assets, which are intellectual property for anybody that’s manufacturing something. But now how do you create a system where someone in India, someone in Iowa, someone in Raleigh can look and work on and interact with the same part. And you have the same version of that right one, because if you manufacture something to the wrong version, how much money does that cost? Right? 

So we were in the optimization of the design and the manufacturing process. That was the technology we were in. One, I’m not an engineer, two, I’m not a computer scientist, and three, if you asked me to repeat what I just said, I can’t do it, because that was years ago, right, in in my, my skillset, but one of my leaders said, Don, let me tell you something that makes us mad. I was like, okay, I’m wanting to know. He said, you’re right a lot, and we’re tired of it. And I was like, okay, why?

And, and he said, why are you right so much when we’re having some of these discussions? I said, well, you all are trying to find the right answer. And I’ve talked to five people about it before the meeting, and then before I tell you what I think I listened to what you all have to say. So now I have information on you, all who I think are bright. That’s why we’ve hired you, five other people that I’ve talked to. And then I assimilate that information to make the best choice possible. You all are competing for the best idea. 

And there was a silence at the table. It’s all about your perspective. If you, if you have the organizational focus as the perspective, you’re just trying to find the best answer for the business. But the trap is the best answer that makes us look the best, and it’s a trap. You don’t have to suppress your talent, your smarts, your academic pedigree, your accomplishments, to think in this other realm. And you can toggle between the two, because sometimes it is important that you lead the charge.

Sometimes it is important that you come to the right conclusion and then sometimes it’s just not. And your job as a leader is to learn how to pull that excellence from. And I think that’s a skill that you have to practice that you practice with your teammates. Um, one of the things that’s, it’s interesting, you know, as I grow and uh, time management.

So one of the things that I learned how to do is be ruthlessly efficient with my time. And so here’s a couple of ways that I do that, and I think about that. So one, you know, we all have these calendars in different things, but think about your calendar and how it automatically defaults to an hour.

How many meetings have we been in that have defaulted to an hour that only need 30 minutes, but they defaulted, but like we let a system determine the amount of time that we spend together? Like we all do it, but it defaults to an hour. What I’ve found is how much can get done in a 15-minute conversation on a single topic.

Part of the challenges with meetings is we try to get too much done in a single meeting and we end up not getting very much done. And so when you think about leadership and MBA, you’re, you all are going to be chairing meetings. You all are going to be running meetings. You’re all going to be leading teams and organizations, or you’re going to be a participant in the meeting.

So let’s look at it from a participant standpoint. Most people send out an agenda, right? And that’s a good corporate practice, and most people do that and have notes and follow actions to the meeting. Most people don’t realize how much impact you can have with the meeting host on the agenda. The agenda is where the power is.

So if you have an item that you want to have more time, or you want to be a part of something, there’s nothing wrong with beforehand going to the host of the meeting and saying, look, I see five items on the agenda. Do you mind if I give a little feedback on the agenda in a, in just a positive way, I have a couple of thoughts? They’ll be like, sure.

Right? Because they want to have a great meeting. Well, there’s these three meetings, are these in the order of priority and you think, well, that’s super simple. Of course there are most likely than not, somebody really quickly jotted a couple things that came from three or four different people, consolidate them and throw them in a calendar.

But if you become the one that starts to think about having better meetings and being thoughtful about what that agenda looks like and flows like again, you’re doing a small thing that helps the team have a better interaction, but two, it saves you time from being in bad meetings. I couldn’t stand, I still can’t stand being in bad meetings.

And since meetings are like over half of the time you spend in a corporation, then having better and efficient meetings should like be a skill we talk about more. So it’s not just the agenda, right? It’s prioritization agenda, and also most meeting agendas have too many items. So no one can actually dive into a topic, explored enough to have an outcome that’s meaningful.

We check the box, discuss it a little, think we did something we didn’t, and then we meet again about another meeting in two weeks. It’s the weirdest thing, but, but people do it all the time, but if you become the one that gently nudges the team to have better, more effective meetings, power number two, in the meeting. 

We talk a lot about diversity equity inclusion, we talk about belonging at work. We talk about inclusivity, how to make people feel more included. Well, guess what? You don’t feel included if you’re left out of sharing your ideas in a meeting, right? It starts there. You don’t feel included in the meeting if you talk over, if someone talks over you, when it’s your turn to speak, right? So if you learn and develop your strength as a meeting to be able to do this. And I do this in meetings to this day, because a lot of times people don’t do it because they’re rude. Sometimes they’re super excited They have an idea. They want to share it. Let’s do this They’re super. 

And in meetings, I’ll be like, John, amazing input. Thank you. Can we just give space, I want to see if Carol has a thought? John usually be like, absolutely. I very rarely get John’s like, no, I’m not going to share this. This is amazing stuff. Like, you know what I mean? Like who, like, who does that? Right? Like, like, even if he’s thinking that, like, who does that in public? Right. Like, like nobody. And if they do, it’s like, okay, fine. That’s weird. But, okay Like, you know what I mean? But usually John just didn’t know how to land the plane. Do you know people like that?

Like they get talking and her talking and they know they should stop, but they’re talking and they’re talking and they really know they should stop, but they don’t know how to land the plane So sometimes you helping John just gently land the plane. Right? It was a good idea three minutes ago, but now we don’t know what you’re working through.

Right. You know what I mean? It’s different. But anyway, I’ll say, John, can we just hold, um, I’ll give you the mic right back, but can we just see if Carol has a thought. A couple of things that happened, one Carol has an amazing thought, two. Carol says, I’m good. I’m really enjoying the conversation, but thank you for giving me that space. Um, I’m good, please, please continue. Because some people are super introverted and they want to process things and they want to take notes and then we’ll think about it later. It’s all good, but what you did, from whatever chair you said in is you made sure the microphone got passed around.

And then if another leader in that room, when they see you do that, and they’re like, whoa, Suzanne has amazing people skills. That was really like, that was just really thoughtful. But you’re doing it to help the flow and you’re doing it selfishly to what, not being bad meetings. Like I literally made it my goal to not be in bad meetings. If I could work with the meeting host and if it was my manager, I would be like, Grant, okay, listen, I saw this agenda. This meetings like two hours, like, um, whoa. Look, if I only have to be in this meeting for like 45 minutes, I probably could make like four sales calls, and like could be worth like a lot of money. What do you think about like me doing my stuff first? And then I’ll just kind of, he was like, yeah. Do whatever you need. That sounds great. 

Right. I got out of meetings for years. I pop in. I was first. Do you know what I mean? Cause I told my boss who was running most of these meetings, that it was hurting him to have me in a bad meeting, but it’s like well, Don, why is that so important? If I saved myself two hours a week doing some of these things every week for 10 years, those time elements are like money and interest. It compounds, it grows. Right? And it sounds like a little thing, but really it’s a number one and active being a little bit selfless, two being a little bit more ruthless with your time, but being cool about it. I don’t know if I can make this meeting. It’s not worth my time. Well, that sounds weird, right? Do it a little bit different to protect your time, but also to protect the organization. 

Final thought on meetings. Whenever you have the opportunity to chair one, take it. Cause then no matter what your title is, you’re in charge and you get an opportunity to practice leading one meeting at a time. And the way, your thought of the way you do meeting, follow-up the way you track the agenda. It’s a way to promote your brand by being helpful. And then again, not having bad meetings. Does that make sense? Is that helpful? And I try to, when I’m speaking with folks, you can talk about things at a high level and you all have teams and trainers and coaches and leaders that are helping you do these things.

I’m trying to share with you, things that you can implement tomorrow. The things that I appreciated when I was, um, and I still am a competitive learner, so I don’t mean it like I’ve arrived. It just means I’m at a different spot in the journey as we talked about before. And I mean that very sincerely, but if you can take some things that you need to kind of marinate on some things I may say that you don’t immediately get with that, you’re like, okay, but then if you can take a few things that you can implement quickly, right. Then the session is worthwhile, right? And then you can keep on your learning journey. So that was the time element,

Here’s, what’s fun about what I do. And I’m going to talk about myself for a little bit, but, um, I want you to take it with the spirit that it’s intended, right? This is not a brag component. I’ll bring it together in a minute, right? A promise. So built software companies and exited them. I’ve sold technology globally. I currently serve on the board of Vital Medical Center, which is a 13,000 employees, uh, serves 29 counties in Eastern North Carolina ,multi-billion dollar healthcare system, I’m on the board of Raleigh Town Bank, so the financial institution. I just recently joined the board of Easterseals. They’re very focused on mental health and disabilities, which is something I like, but they also have 2300 employees. So I also get my fix on organizational design, change, leadership So I get both by helping them.

I’m the board chair for Walk West, which is one of the fastest growing digital agencies in North Carolina. So 2018, 2019, 2020, we’re in an Inc 5,000. Uh, in 2015 we had $300,000 in revenue. So now we are multimillion dollar digital agency and serve on the board of that, transitioned a CEO. Um, the diversity movement are my latest venture. Uh, and I’ll tell you a little bit about why we started that, but just to give you some facts on, on growth, we’ve grown from zero to a hundred companies, uh, as partners and clients with us in the last 12 months.

And we talked about some of the accolades with Inc magazine, and there’s a couple more that are there. So that’s moving in a good direction. my book is coming out in June, so hopefully you all read that and, and share with that. I serve as a board member investor in probably about seven different startup companies.

The reason I’m sharing these things with you of the executive coaching piece, I don’t do it as a, um, career. I do it primarily for clients that have folks that I’m working with that have an executive, but a found a niche. And this is active coaching space. That is like, it’s my jam. And I’ll tell you this in a minute and I’m going to wrap around why I’m talking about me.

The world now is very focused on being employee centered. The world now is focused on diversity equity inclusion. The world now is how do you create belonging at work? Right? All of these things are good. Now think about executives that have taken 20 years to grow in the organization in a command-and-control hierarchy. And then now being asked to lead in a radically different way, they’re struggling and there’s no one that cares about that struggle. And I’m not asking you to, I’m just telling you, there’s some silent struggle with leaders that grew up in a certain way, a way that, that if they asked you to do something, you jumped, how hot right now for leader asked you to do something you’re like, well, maybe, um, or, you know, I’ve got like four other interviews ahead I’m interviewing headhunters.

And like, I’ll get back to you if that’s something that right. It’s a totally different dynamic. And so the executive coaching niche, because I grew up in that command and control, I grew up as that hard charging sales professional, and now I’ve evolved and grown and matured right in my leadership style, my leadership perspective.

And so I’m coaching a handful of leaders that are really, really struggling right with this transition. And, um, one of them, global corporation, European leader in particular from Germany, leading American based workforce. So if you think about German engineering, if you think about German directness, if you think about the exactness, if you think about the, sometimes the lack of tact and the dialogue, right?

Like if we put some stereotypes, you can kind of get it, and then leading in this new DEI driven, empathetic environment that we now have in America, uh, his reviews were not great, He got, he got, he got a lot of feedback right on, on this, on the style. But in talking with the leader, what I found, and this was really cool is the openness, the desire, the want to, to change.

The reason I talked to you about me is because I want to let you know that the varied perspectives that I have inform what I’m sharing with you. I’m not sharing with you just as the perspective of a former software sales guy. I’m not sharing with you just as a DEI practitioner at this moment. I’m not sharing with you just as a board member of board of director, a member for organizations. I’m sharing with your insight that is been synthesized across hundreds of different case studies.

And that’s why I’m highly focused on those cheat codes, and there’s different things that I shared with you, that they work, that they matter, right, and that the simplicity of things right, is kind of the final talking point, is one of the super powers to learn. Do not over-complicate things with people that are dealing with a pandemic, that people are dealing with work and school. 

People are dealing with so much outside of work that our attention spans are shorter than ever for anything new, and so that means the way that we communicate to folks, the way that we follow up is super important and the way that we give people space to recharge. So one of the things with this executive is very, very simple. I said, let me tell you a couple of things you’re doing and you don’t have to tell me.

He’s like, okay. I said, you’re emailing people on nights and weekends, and while they’re on vacation. He was like, well, but they don’t have to read it. I was like, whoa, whoa, you’re the CEO of a billion-dollar company. If you send someone an email, they’re going to read it. That makes sense I get it. It wasn’t complicated, right, but the distance between me saying it and him getting it, like it took a minute, but he was, but here’s the thing we talked about. Most of us look at the world through our personal lens. It just took that moment to look at it through the lens of his team. And then after a month working, I was talking with a couple of his teammates. And he says, you know what? I was on vacation. I got no emails. Thank you, because I know he didn’t do that. 

But that simple act of change rose, this leader’s credibility with his team members. He thought he was saving time for getting the email out, but he was creating anxiety. By changing that behavior, he reduced anxiety and grew credibility as a leader. We don’t need to be afraid of mistakes that we make. We need to be afraid of making the same ones, not learning and improving. If we improve people will give us room. I found this, I do not think people are as polarized as in our politics and our different things where that is true.

I think people just want to see us grow and change and be better. And so don’t worry about so much any one individual mistake, and that’s another thing. Graded and you’re looking at academia, right? You’re graded on getting it right. There’s no grade on continued progress, but leadership is about continued progress.

And so you have to look at the academic paradigm that is going to sharpen your skills, sharpen your analytical skills, create a powerful network of peers that will last you like all of those things are good and powerful. And then take that other step, that practical little snippets and realize that failure is a learning opportunity as long as you embrace it. And most people don’t embrace their failures because they’re trying to cover them. They’re trying to hide them and they’re trying to make it at somebody else and not them. And what the leader does more naturally than others, is says, I am responsible. If something doesn’t go right in my organization, I am responsible.

I didn’t lead well enough. I didn’t provide the right infrastructure. What do I need to do different? And when you start that conversation with your team, from that perspective, then other people will raise their hand and then everyone will have that shared responsibility, but you have to lead it up first. 

And then the final, the final thought learning should be fun. Business is fun. Winning is fun. And the work that you all are doing, the work that you all are putting in extra, in addition to the things we’re already doing, I applaud you, I respect you, and I appreciate it. 

And if working together, we can create a better workplace, right that is certainly focused on the bottom line and focused on growth, all of those things, right, but we can do so with a little bit more people-centered focus, then one leader at a time we’re making the world a better place and I’m into that all day. And that’s why I try to be helpful where I can.

And the things that I know, the things I’ve learned and the things that I’m learning all come from a place that I’m willing to be bad at something while I’m learning something new, to get good at it over time. And I would encourage you to reduce that barrier of being bad at something new so that you can get better over time.

And this is the final story, and this is why this is important. And this last statement, that’s how I was able to be successful in the technology business, successful in the marketing business, successful now in the DEI business, successful selling to enterprise corporations in manufacturing, because that learning capacity is something that gives you career flexibility.

It’s not what you know, it’s how quickly you can learn something new, and then apply, some of the fundamental things that are transferable. And so that’s something that I would encourage you all to think about because that gives you the most personal, uh, career options when you kind of adopt that mindset.

Because most of us don’t really have a clear path of where we’re going to be 10 years from now in terms of what we’re doing. Some, some do. I don’t want to put for those of you that, like you got it written down, nailed down, but some of us directionally know some of the things we want, directionally the kind of money that we want to make.

But within that direction, that learning aptitude gives you the opportunity to pivot with confidence.